Manchester United 2 PAOK 0
UEFA Europa League
Thursday 7 November 2024
red record
The context
John and I were still closing in on our elusive ninety-two League grounds. We had each visited Old Trafford many times, but never together. A group stage fixture for Ruud van Nistelrooy’s misfiring United side gave us the chance to put things right.
The history
cotton tale
George Stephenson opened his Liverpool to Manchester railway in 1830. This venture – together with the equally new-fangled Bridgewater Canal – made many entrepreneurs wealthy, but also imposed enormous deprivation on an already turbulent working-class population. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were among those who recognised nascent revolutionary stirrings even as “Cottonopolis” spawned more than two thousand mills.
Piccadilly palaver
The city’s rail network quickly outgrew Stephenson’s terminus behind Deansgate. A replacement at Store Street – soon renamed London Road, and now called Piccadilly – connected Manchester with Euston. It was held up by two enormous viaducts and grew in size during the century’s second half, when lack of available space led to a relief terminus, known as Mayfield, being provided nearby.
Central perk
Different companies built their own stations. Victoria was designed by Stephenson for through trains between Liverpool, Yorkshire and Glasgow, while Exchange – mostly across the Irwell in Salford, but still sufficiently close for both to share a half-mile long platform – added much-needed extra capacity. Central’s elegant arch, meanwhile, offered even more London services via Derby to St Pancras.
Victoria principal
Engine sheds spread across Manchester’s suburbs and could eventually accommodate five hundred locomotives. Stephenson’s company had a depot at Longsight, beside their main line out of Store Street, while the rival Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway settled on Newton Heath. This sprawling site – convenient for Victoria – also housed a substantial carriage works.
canalise (Benjamin William Leader)
Successful trade needed cost-effective movement of goods. Tensions arose with Liverpool’s dock and railway authorities, whose own profit margin derived from duty paid on cargo. One solution was to canalise the Mersey and build an entirely new harbour; this apparently fantastic scheme would turn Manchester – forty miles from the sea – into Britain’s third largest port.
attractions
The canal’s eastern end was dug out of redundant parkland. Pomona Palace once drew 100,000 visitors per year; it gave Manchester citizens convenient access to fresh air, and – along with extensive pleasure gardens – incorporated Britain’s largest concert hall. But the complex lost custom because of Belle Vue Zoo’s growing popularity, and was finally put out of business when a nearby chemical factory exploded.
basins
Eight large basins could accommodate up to ten ocean-going vessels each. Trafford Road swing bridge separated these into equal Salford and Manchester sections, but – despite the new Ship Canal’s partisan labelling – only Pomona Dock No.1 was actually in Manchester. Five thousand dockers and labourers would eventually work there, with eighteen million tons of cargo handled annually.
industrial
The new canal came as bad news for local squire Sir Humphrey de Trafford. He suddenly found his stately home surrounded by ships, with arriviste industrialists its only prospective purchasers. Historic Trafford Hall had soon been turned into a hotel; five square miles of Elizabethan deer park became the world’s first – and for many years largest – industrial estate.
park life
Scientist John Dalton’s botanical garden fared just as badly. Factory and dock workers needed entertainment, so Anglo-American entrepreneur John Calvin Brown built his White City Amusement Park over the fifteen acre site. Local people could enjoy its ballroom, skating rink, water chute and “figure of eight’ rollercoaster, lit at night by rows of brilliant lanterns.
punters
A greyhound track was opened when the sport became popular after World War One. White City Stadium – which took less than twelve months to complete, and could hold fifty thousand people – soon became more popular than Belle Vue’s rival track, attracting more than a million punters every year. Athletics and speedway events also took place there.
pavilion
Cricket had been played locally since 1865. Lancashire Cricket Club’s pitch stood just behind White City, on land originally bought from the de Trafford estate. Test matches were staged regularly from 1884 onwards; the team then won four County Championships between 1879 and 1889, earning enough money to pay for a magnificent pavilion designed by Thomas Muirhead.
small
Manchester United also recognised this area’s business potential. The one-time Yorkshire and Lancashire Railway factory team had previously been known as Newton Heath. Their Bank Street home was small by Football League standards; Trafford offered them massive potential support, along with plentiful building land that Scottish architect Archibald Leitch set about converting into a fine new ground.
extensive
United first played at Old Trafford on 19 February 1910. They had been League champions two years previously and were current FA Cup holders. Leitch’s extensive terraces could nominally hold 80,000 but that figure always remained untested, with only crowds against Aston Villa (in 1920) and a Cup semi-final between Wolves and Grimsby coming anywhere near it.
Their success owed much to former Burnley manager Ernest Mangnall. Another title soon followed. But fortunes declined when Mangnall joined Manchester City, and United subsequently spent three decades bouncing more or less aimlessly between the top two divisions. Things might well have stayed that way if not for the appointment of Matt Busby immediately following World War II.
Busby was fresh from wartime service with the Physical Training Corps and arrived still wearing Army uniform. His task seemed a daunting one. Old Trafford had been hit by several German bombs intended for the nearby docks, obliging United to play home games at City’s Maine Road ground; their record attendance of 84,569 would be recorded there in 1948.
Committees usually ran football clubs. The team manager looked after administrative matters. But Busby insisted that he should recruit players, take training and select the team. These revolutionary methods won eight major honours, while – more importantly – creating a blueprint for club politics that was adopted by other forward-thinking managers.
His team were League runners-up three times before winning the 1948 FA Cup. Their incisive, robust style relied on Charlie Mitten’s supply of deep crosses to Stan Pearson, Jack Rowley, Jimmy Delaney and Johnny Morris. Three Wembley goals against Blackpool came from Rowley and Pearson, with midfielder John Anderson getting the fourth.
Rowley scored thirty times during 1951-52 as United finished top. Long-serving captain Johnny Carey also had a fine season. But the side was getting old, and Busby – rather than buying replacements – decided to introduce home-grown talent. Striker Roger Byrne and centre-half Jackie Blanchflower both made debuts that year, with others not far behind.
The so-called Busby Babes would redefine both Manchester United and British football. A young team – whose ages averaged just twenty-one – won successive titles playing quick, expansive football. Something irreplaceable was lost when the plane taking them home from their European Cup-tie in Belgrade crashed on take off from Munich airport in February 1958.
Eight first team regulars died in the crash. Seven – Byrne, Duncan Edwards, David Pegg, Liam Whelan, Eddie Colman, Mark Jones and Geoff Bent – were youth products developed by Busby’s assistant Jimmy Murphy. The other, Tommy Taylor, had been signed from Barnsley. Blanchflower and club captain Johnny Berry never played again, while Busby spent nine weeks in hospital and twice received the last rites.
Murphy had been managing Wales for their game with Israel so was not on the flight. He subsequently took charge until Busby could return, building a new side around survivors Harry Gregg, Bill Foulkes, Albert Scanlon, Dennis Viollet and Bobby Charlton. United gradually recovered. Despite some indifferent League form they won the 1963 FA Cup before adding their sixth title two years later.
New signing Denis Law had scored the opener against Leicester City at Wembley. It was his twenty-ninth of the season. He already enjoyed a strong bond with Charlton, and Busby now combined both forwards with outrageously gifted youth product, George Best. Their flamboyant attacking play inspired another championship win to secure qualification for the 1967-68 European Cup.
The journey
special branch
Every visit I make to Old Trafford recalls my childhood. It doesn’t help that residents-only schemes have pushed street parking beyond Seymour Grove and close to our old house. John and I met on these dark, quiet roads; most things seem smaller, but flimsy saplings I remember being planted are now thirty feet high and forcing the pavements out of shape.
Flesh and wine
session
We settled on the Quadrant for tonight’s pre-match session. Out of town fans throng every pub for miles; some places do, however, retain more local character than others. This old favourite hides away among small shops, next to a tree-lined roundabout between the cricket ground and Longford Park. It’s surrounded by seemingly endless suburban semis built during southern Manchester’s pre-War expansion.
memorial
This was boozer of choice for many United players both before and after Munich. Legend claims that Tommy Taylor would sit here for hours, innocently drinking tonic water which landlord John Leary topped up with gin under the bar. A memorial plaque on one wall – funded by locals and regulars – commemorates all twenty-two people who lost their lives.
hot stuff
Takeaways are scarce among Firswood’s sedate avenues. Our subsequent route went along equally residential Railway Road – avoiding Lou Macari’s chippy, and a grim press of identikit food vans nearby – so we decided to dine inside. My pie was hot as volcanic magma but had cooled down somewhat when I finally made it to the Stretford End’s topmost row.
The game
hopeful
Home fans were hopeful United could break their run of straight draws in this competition. For much of the first half, however, it seemed as though Greek champions PAOK would frustrate them much as Twente, Porto and Fenerbahce had done. Both sides made themselves busy but Mady Camara’s stinging drive – tipped over at full strength by Andre Onana – was the closest we came to a goal.
nerves
Amad Diallo calmed Mancunian nerves when his header from a precise Bruno Fernandes cross put United ahead. PAOK fought back; Andrija Zivkovic wasted Magomed Ozdoyev’s excellent through ball, and Tarik Tissoudali shot straight at Onana. But this would be Diallo’s night. He took his second – hit expertly across Dominik Kotarski after robbing Abdul Rahman Baba – quite brilliantly.
Teams and goals
Manchester United: Onana, Dalot (Martinez 65), Evans, Lindelof, Mazraoui, Ugarte (Eriksen 65), Casemiro, Garnacho (Rashford 65), Bruno Fernandes, Diallo (Mount 81), Hojlund (Zirkzee 90). Unused subs: Amass, Bayindir, Fitzgerald, Heaton, Wheatley, de Ligt, Antony.
PAOK: Kotarski, Baba, Colley, Kedziora, Jonny, Schwab (Bakayoko 65), Ozdoev, Taison (Shoretire 84), Camara (Despodov 75), Zivkovic, Tissoudali (Chalov 65). Unused subs: Balomenos, Michailidis, Monastirlis, Joan Sastre, Brandon Thomas, Thymianis.
Goals: Diallo 50, 77.
Attendance: 73,174.